Top 10 Attempts to Build a Flying Car

Engineers have been trying to build a flying car for a century, but only a few designs ever succeeded in flying through the air and driving on the road. Here are the 10 best tries in a hundred years of tinkering, dreaming, and daredevil test flying.

Top 10 Attempts to Build a Flying Car

Top 10 Attempts to Build a Flying Car

Since Glenn Curtiss patented a flying car in 1917, perhaps 100 different designs have been analyzed and widely discussed. Only about a dozen concept vehicles flew and drove on roads, and three designers died trying to prove their own concepts. Because of the incredible design, engineering, legal, and licensing challenges of building a flying car, just two designs have ever been certified by the CAA (now FAA) as aircraft—and the Taylor Aerocar of 1959 is the only one that was ever produced. Six Aerocars were built, sold, and flown.

When Taylor was developing the Aerocar more than a half-century ago, flying cars were a popular dream and famously graced the covers and pages of Popular Mechanics. When the interstate highway system was designed in 1956, planners thought flying cars would be part of our future, and runways next to freeways were part of some original proposals. Now, though, only some small ranch roads in the West and the Alcan Highway in Canada and Alaska have adjacent runways, but those are used for aircraft, not flying cars.

Today, the dream of a George Jetson personal flying machine seems like outdated mid-century futurism. But inventors continue to persevere. There is the clever Terrafugia, the crazy multiturbine Moller, and the hope that maybe, someday, we'll all have the flying cars we were promised. (No promises on jetpacks, though.) Here are some of the best attempts of the past and present to realize the dream.

Curtiss Autoplane

Curtiss Autoplane

Years Active: 1917

In February 1917, aviator Glenn Curtiss introduced the Model 11 Autoplane at the New York Pan-American Aeronautical Exposition. It featured a fully enclosed aluminum body with plastic windows and could be driven on roads using power from the propeller. The three-seater had the driver/pilot in front and two passengers behind. A front-engine Curtiss motor powered the rear propeller with a driveshaft and pulleys, and the triplane's wings could be removed from the vehicle.

Curtiss wanted an airplane that featured the luxury interior of cars of that era, instead of the bare-bones trim of the airplanes of the time. The Curtiss Autoplane had a heater, and the occupants were fully protected from the elements. But when World War I began, development ended and the Autoplane never flew.